POEMS
POEMS
BY
THEODORE MAYNARD
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
TORONTO
McCLELLAND AND STEWART, LTD.
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1917, 1918, by Daniel E. Hudson; Copyright, 1917,
1918, by The Sisters of Mercy; Copyright, 1917, 1919, by The
Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in the State of New
York._
_Copyright, 1919, by_
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO
MY WIFE
_We two have seen with our own eyes
God’s multitudinous disguise;
Waylaid Him in His voyaging
Among the buttercups of Spring;
In valleys where the lilies shone
More glorious than Solomon
We met a poet passing by,
And learned his lyric--you and I!_
_But oh! did kindly Heaven not bless
Our lives with more than loveliness,
When, cast on every sapling-rod,
Was seen the motley of our God;
When having picked our way with craft
Up cliffs to hear Him when He laughed,
We felt, uplifted on the wind,
His folly blown into our mind?_
_What doubt can touch us? We have heard
The baby laughter of the Word!
We mingle with solemnity
A Catholic note of revelry
In hypostatic union.
From love’s carved choir-stalls we con
The plain-song of the Breviary
Illumined by hilarity.
For as each cleansing sacrament
To our soul’s comforting was sent
(Through water and oil and wheat and wine,
Bringing to human the divine),
So shall we find on lovers’ lips
The splendour of apocalypse,
And through the body’s five gates come
To all the good of Christendom._
_We have no fear that we shall lose
This joyous Gospel of good news,
For our symbolic love has stood
By virtue of its fortitude--
Knowing a bitter Lenten fast,
Satan discomforted at last,
A bowed back scalding with great scars,
Gethsemane of tears and stars,
A journey of the cross, and ah,
Its part and lot in Golgotha!_
_We know--let the marvellous thing be said!--
Love’s resurrection from the dead ...
For as Magdalen came with cinnamon
And aloes to smear Love’s limbs upon,
But met alone on the Easter grass
Life’s Lord, though she wist not Who He was--
So we, till He spoke as He spoke to her,
Mistook Him for the gardener._
_April 14th, 1918._
NOTE
This edition of Theodore Maynard’s poems represents the author’s own
selection of such of his published verse as he wishes included in a
permanent collection. With few omissions, it represents the contents of
the three volumes issued in Great Britain under the titles, “_Laughs and
Whifts of Song_,” 1915; “_Drums of Defeat_,” 1917; “_Folly_,” 1918, none
of which has hitherto been published in this country.
ON THEODORE MAYNARD’S POEMS
In the case of any poet who has caught and held our recollection, there
is generally a particular piece of work which remains in our mind, not
as the crown, but as the key. And ever since I saw in _The New Witness_
some lines called “A Song of Colours,” by Theodore Maynard, they have
remained to me as a sort of simplification, or permanent element, of the
rest of the poet’s writings; and I have felt him especially as a poet of
colour. They are not by any means the best of his lines. They are
direct, as is appropriate to a ballad; and they have none of the fine
whimsicality or the frank humour to be found elsewhere in his work.
Among these others the choice is hard: but I should say that the finest
poetry as such is to be found in the images, and even in the very title,
of “The World’s Miser”: and even more in the poem called “Apocalypse.”
In this latter the poet imagines a new world which shall be supernatural
in the strongest sense of the word; that of being more vivid and
positive than the natural; and not (as it is so often imagined) more
tenuous and void.
“Or what empurpled blooms to oust the rose
Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair!”
The last line has the touch of the true mystic, which changes a thing
and yet leaves it familiar. True artistic pugnacity, a thing that
generally goes with true artistic pleasure, is well-expressed in the
shrewd lines of the poem printed as a sequel to another poem called “To
a Good Atheist.” The sequel is called “To a Bad Atheist,” with the
charming explanation: “Who wrote what he called a trinity of meek
retorts to the preceding poem, which were not meek, but full of pride
and abominable heresy.” He describes the bad atheist’s mind as
containing nothing but sawdust, sun and sand; which is accurate and
exhaustive. And in so far as poetry appeals to particular temperaments,
I myself find enjoyment expecially in the part of the collection
properly to be called “Laughs”; in the ballads of feasting and
fellowship; and especially in that sublime absolution gravely offered to
the Duke of Norfolk.
But the sentiment of colour still ran like a thread through the whole
texture; and I think there is hardly a poem that does not repeat it. And
this is important; because the whole of Mr. Maynard’s inspiration is
part of what is the main business of our time: the resurrection of the
Middle Ages. The modern movement, with its Guild Socialism and its
military reaction against the fatalism of the Barbarian, is as certainly
drawing its life from the lost centuries of Catholic Europe, as the
movement more commonly called the Renaissance drew its life from the
lost languages and sculptures of antiquity. And, by a quaint
inconsistency, Hellenists and Neo-Pagans of the school of Mr. Lowes
Dickinson will call us antiquated for gathering the flowers which still
grow on the graves of our mediæval ancestors, while they themselves will
industriously search for the scattered ashes from the more distant pyres
of the Pagans.
And the visible clue to the Middle Ages is colour. The mediæval man
could paint before he could draw. In the almost startling inspiration
which we call stained glass, he discovered something that is almost more
coloured than colour; something that bears the same relation to mere
colour that golden flame does to golden sand. He did not, like other
artists, try in his pictures to paint the sun; he made the sun paint his
pictures. He mixed the aboriginal light with the paints upon his
palette. And it is this translucent actuality of colour which I feel in
the phraseology of this writer, in a way it is not easy to analyse. We
can only say that when he says--
“Among the yellow primroses
He holds His summer palaces”
we have an impression, which it is the object of all poetry to produce.
It can only be described by saying that a primrose by the river’s brim a
_yellow_ primrose is to him, and it could not possibly be anything more.
And this almost torrid directness and distinctness of tint is again
connected with another quality of the poet and his poetic tradition:
what many would call asceticism alternating with what many would call
buffoonery. The colour conventions of the Middle Ages were copied very
beautifully by the school of Rossetti and Swinburne. But they lost the
exuberance of the Gothic and became a pattern rather than a plan;
chiefly because they were not seriously inspired by any of the
enthusiasms of the Middle Ages. Its decorative repetitions sometimes
became quite dreary and artificial; as in Swinburne’s unfortunate
couplet about the lilies and languors of virtue and the raptures and
roses of vice. A little healthy gardening would have taught Swinburne
that it takes quite as much virtue to grow a rose as to grow a lily. It
might also have taught him that virtue is never languid, whatever else
it may be: and that even lilies are not really languid so long as they
are alive. If such decadents want an image of what it really is that
holds up the heads of lilies or any other growing things, I can refer
them to a couplet in this little volume, which is more beautiful and
more original and means a great deal more--
“What wilful trees of any spring
Than your young body are more fair?”
These lines contain a principle of life and mark the end of a pagan
sterility. They contain the secret, not of gathering rosebuds while we
may, but of growing them when we choose.
G. K. CHESTERTON.
CONTENTS
LAUGHS AND WHIFTS OF SONG
PAGE
A SONG OF COLOURS 3
CECIDIT, CECIDIT BABYLON MAGNA 5
APOCALYPSE 7
GHOSTS 9
PROCESSIONAL 10
A SONG OF LAUGHTER 12
BALLADE IN PRAISE OF ARUNDEL 13
THE TRAMP 15
THE WORLD’S MISER 17
EASTER 19
THE GLORY OF THE ORIFLAMME 20
TO A GOOD ATHEIST 21
TO A BAD ATHEIST 23
PALM SUNDAY 25
WHEN I RIDE INTO THE TOWN 27
REQUIEM 29
AVE ATQUE VALE 30
ALADDIN 31
ADAM 32
THE ENGLISH SPRING 33
AT THE CRIB 35
THE MYSTIC 37
TO ANY SAINT 39
SUNSET ON THE DESERT 40
FOLLY
FOLLY 43
THE SHIPS 45
LAUGHTER 47
VOCATION 49
BLINDNESS 50
DRINKING SONG 52
THREE TRIOLETS 54
A NEW CANTERBURY TALE 56
IN MEMORIAM F. H. M. 62
TO THE IRISH DEAD 63
JOHN REDMOND 64
BEAUTY 65
FAITH’S DIFFICULTY 67
CHRISTMAS ON CRUSADE 69
THE ASCETIC 71
SONNET FOR THE FIFTH OF OCTOBER 75
WARFARE 76
TREASON 77
THERE WAS AN HOUR 78
NOCTURNE 79
PRIDE 80
BALLADE OF SHEEP BELLS 82
BALLADE OF A FEROCIOUS CATHOLIC 84
DAWN 86
SUNSET 87
PEACE 88
CARRION 89
THE BUILDING OF THE CITY 91
EDEN RE-OPENED 93
THE HOLY SPRING 95
VIATICUM 97
PUNISHMENT 98
AFTER COMMUNION 99
THE UNIVERSAL MOTHER 100
THE BOASTER 102
UNWED 104
WED 105
ENGLAND 106
LYRIC LOVE 108
DRUMS OF DEFEAT
THE FOOL 113
DON QUIXOTE 115
IRELAND 118
IN MEMORIAM 119
MATER DESOLATA 120
THE STIRRUP CUP 121
THE ENSIGN 122
BALLADE OF ORCHARDS 124
A GREAT WIND 126
BIRTHDAY SONNET 128
SILENCE 129
AT YELVERTON 130
THE JOY OF THE WORLD 132
GRATITUDE 135
IN DOMO JOHANNIS 139
AT WOODCHESTER 140
“FOR THEY SHALL POSSESS THE EARTH” 142
BALLADE OF THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD 144
TAIL-PIECE 146
AVE 147
A REPLY 149
JOB 151
THE SOIL OF SOLACE 153
TO THE DEAD 154
SPRING, 1916 156
THE RETURN 157
FULFILMENT 158
PROPHECY 159
THE SINGER TO HIS LADY 160
CERTAINTIES 161
FEAR 162
CHARITY 163
SIGHT AND INSIGHT 164
CHRISTMAS CAROL 166
A GARDEN ENCLOSED 167
THE LOVER 169
POEMS
LAUGHS AND WHIFTS OF SONG
A SONG OF COLOURS
Gold for the crown of Mary,
Blue for the sea and sky,
Green for the woods and meadows
Where small white daisies lie,
And red for the colour of Christ’s blood
When He came to the cross to die.
These things the high God gave us
And left in the world He made--
Gold for the hilt’s enrichment,
And blue for the sword’s good blade,
And red for the roses a youth may set
On the white brows of a maid.
Green for the cool, sweet gardens
Which stretch about the house,
And the delicate new frondage
The winds of Spring arouse,
And red for the wine which a man may drink
With his fellows in carouse.
Blue and green for the comfort
Of tired hearts and eyes,
And red for that sudden hour which comes
With danger and great emprise,
And white for the honour of God’s throne
When the dead shall all arise.
Gold for the cope and chalice,
For kingly pomp and pride,
And red for the feathers men wear in their caps
When they win a war or a bride,
And red for the robe which they dressed God in
On the bitter day He died.
CECIDIT, CECIDIT BABYLON MAGNA!
The aimless business of your feet,
Your swinging wheels and piston rods,
The smoke of every sullen street
Have passed away with all your Gods.
For in a meadow far from these
A hodman treads across the loam,
Bearing his solid sanctities
To that strange altar called his home.
I watch the tall, sagacious trees
Turn as the monks do, every one;
The saplings, ardent novices,
Turning with them towards the sun,
That Monstrance held in God’s strong hands,
Burnished in amber and in red;
God, His Own priest, in blessing stands;
The earth, adoring, bows her head.
The idols of your market place,
Your high debates, where are they now?
Your lawyers’ clamour fades apace--
A bird is singing on the bough!
Three fragile, sacramental things
Endure, though all your pomps shall pass--
A butterfly’s immortal wings,
A daisy and a blade of grass.
APOCALYPSE
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first
heaven and the first earth were passed away.”--APOC.. xxi, I.
Shall summer woods where we have laughed our fill;
Shall all your grass so good to walk upon;
Each field which we have loved, each little hill
Be burnt like paper--as hath said Saint John?
Then not alone they die! For God hath told
How all His plains of mingled fire and glass,
His walls of hyacinth, His streets of gold,
His aureoles of jewelled light shall pass,
That He may make us nobler things than these,
And in her royal robes of blazing red
Adorn His bride. Yea, with what mysteries
And might and mirth shall she be diamonded!
And what new secrets shall our God disclose;
Or set what suns of burnished brass to flare;
Or what empurpled blooms to oust the rose;
Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair!
What pinnacles of silver tracery,
What dizzy rampired towers shall God devise
Of topaz, beryl and chalcedony
To make Heaven pleasant to His children’s eyes!
And in what cataclysms of flame and foam
Shall the first Heaven sink--as red as sin--
When God hath Cast aside His ancient home
As far too mean to house His Children in!
GHOSTS
Some dismal nights there are when spirits walk
Who lived and died unhappy in their time,
To waste the air with vows and whispered talk
Of tarnished love or hate or secret crime--
But now the moon moves splendid through the sky;
The night is brilliant like a silver shield;
And in their cavalcades come riding by
The mighty dead of many a tented field.
On this one night at least of all the year
The lists are set again, the lines are drawn;
Again resounds the clang of horse and spear;
The sweet applause of ladies, till the dawn
Makes glad the souls of vizored knights--then they,
Hearing that seneschal, the cock, all troop away.
PROCESSIONAL
See how the plated gates unfold,
How swing the creaking doors of brass!
With drums and gleaming arms, behold
Christ’s regal cohorts pass!
Shall Christ not have His chosen men,
Nor lead His crested knights so tall,
Superb upon their horses, when
The world’s last cities fall?
Ah, no! These few, the maimed, the dumb,
The saints of every lazar’s den,
The earth’s off-scourings--they come
From desert and from fen
To break the terror of the night,
Black dreams and dreadful mysteries,
And proud, lost empires in their might,
And chains and tyrannies.
There ride no gold-encinctured kings
Against the potentates of earth;
God chooses all the weakest things,
And gives Himself in birth
With beaten slaves to draw His breath,
And sleeps with foxes on the moor,
With malefactors shares His death,
Tattered and worn and poor.
See how the plated gates unfold,
How swing the creaking doors of brass!
Victorious in defeat--behold,
Christ and His cohorts pass!
A SONG OF LAUGHTER
The stars with their laughter are shaken;
The long waves laugh at sea;
And the little Imp of Laughter
Laughs in the soul of me.
I know the guffaw of a tempest,
The mirth of a blossom and bud--
But I laugh when I think of Cuchulain[A] who laughed
At the Crows with their bills in his blood.
The mother laughs low at her baby,
The bridegroom with joy in his bride--
And I think that Christ laughed when they took Him with staves
On the night before He died.
[A] Pronounced Cuhúlain.
BALLADE IN PRAISE OF ARUNDEL
(Made after a walk through Surrey and Sussex.)
I’ve trudged along the Pilgrims’ Way,
And from St. Martha’s Hill looked down
O’er Surrey woods and fields which lay
Green in the sunlight. On the crown
Of Hindhead and the Punchbowl’s brink
Of no good thing I’ve been bereaven:
But Arundel’s the place for drink--
_The pubs keep open till eleven._
White chalk-cliffs and the stubborn clay
Are thrown about, and many a town
Breaks on the sight like breaking day;
But after all, who but a clown
Could Arundel with Midhurst link,
Where men go dry from two till seven?
In _Arundel_ (no truth I’ll shrink)
_The pubs keep open till eleven._
A great cool church where men can pray
Secure from misbelieving frown;
And in the Square, I beg to say,
The beer is strong and rich and brown.
Some poor, misguided people think
Petworth’s the spot that’s nearest Heaven:
In _Arundel_ the ale-pots clink--
_The pubs keep open till eleven._
_L’Envoi_
Duke, at the dreadful Judgment Day
Your soul will surely be well shriven,
For then all angel trumps shall bray,
_He kept pubs open till eleven!_
THE TRAMP
My brothers stay in cities
To gather shame and gold,
But I am for the highway
And the wind upon the wold.
They take the train each morning
To a dull, bricked-up place;
I trudge the living country
With the sunlight on my face.
I know no home or shelter,
No bed but good green grass,
Nor any friends but hedgerows
To greet me as I pass.
But though the road still calls me
To places wild and steep,
I find the going heavy;
My eyes are full of sleep.
The fields lie all about me;
The trees are gay with sap--
As I go weary, weary
To my great mother’s lap,
To rest me with my mother,
The kindly earth so brown.
And Lord! But well contented
I’ll lay my carcase down.
THE WORLD’S MISER
I
A miser with an eager face
Sees that each roseleaf is in place.
He keeps beneath strong bolts and bars
The piercing beauty of the stars.
The colours of the dying day
He hoards as treasure--well He may!--
And saves with care (lest they be lost)
The dainty diagrams of frost.
He counts the hairs of every head,
And grieves to see a sparrow dead.
II
Among the yellow primroses
He holds His summer palaces,
And sets the grass about them all
To guard them as His spearmen small.
He fixes on each wayside stone
A mark to shew it as His Own,
And knows when raindrops fall through air
Whether each single one be there,
That gathered into ponds and brooks
They may become His picture-books,
To shew in every spot and place
The living glory of His face.
EASTER
Among the gay, exultant trees,
Over the green and growing grass,
Clothed in immortal mysteries,
I see His living body pass.
The catkins fling abroad His name,
While birds from every bush and spray
Strain feathered necks, and tipped with flame
The hills all stand to greet His day.
Each violet and bluebell curled
Wakes with the dead Christ’s waking eye,
And like burst gravestones clouds are hurled
Across the wide and waiting sky.
And drenched, for very height of mirth,
With clean white tears of April rain,
Like Mary Magdalene the earth
Finds April’s risen Lord again.
THE GLORY OF THE ORIFLAMME
The glory of the Oriflamme,
Or strange, red flowers of the South
Hold no such splendours as lie hid
In your sweet mouth!
The secret honey of the Cliff,
The lure and laughter of the sea
Are not the dear delight that is
Your face to me!
What wilful trees of any spring
Than your young body are more fair?
What glamour of forgotten gold
Lurks in your hair?
The glory of the Oriflamme,
Or strange, red flowers of the South
Hold no such splendours as lie hid
In your sweet mouth!
TO A GOOD ATHEIST
That you can keep your crested courage high,
And hopeless hope without a cause, and wage
Christ’s warfare, lacking all the panoply
Of Faith which shall endure the end of age,
You must be made of finely tempered stuff,
And have a kinship with that Spanish saint,
Who wrote of his soul’s night--it was enough
That he should drag his footsteps tired and faint
Along his God-appointed pathway. You
Have stood against our day of bitter scorn,
When loudly its triumphant trumpets blew
Contempt of all God’s poor. Had you been born
But in the time of Jeanne or Catharine,
Whose charity was as a sword of flame,
With those who drank up martyrdom like wine
Had stood your aureoled and ringing name.
Yet, when that secret day of God shall break
With strange and splendid justice through the skies,
When last are first, then star-ward you shall take
The praise and sorrow of your starry eyes.
TO A BAD ATHEIST
NIND
_who wrote what he called a trinity of meek retorts to the preceding
poem, which were not meek, but full of pride and
abominable heresy._
You do not love the shadows on the wall,
Or mists that flee before a blowing wind,
Or Gothic forests, or light aspen leaves,
Or skies that melt into a dreamy sea.
In the hot, glaring noontide of your mind
(I have your word for it) there is no room
For anything save sawdust, sun and sand.
No monkish flourishes will do for you;
Your life must be set down in black and white.
The quiet half-light of the abbey close,
The cunning carvings of a chantry tomb,
The leaden windows pricked with golden saints--
All these are nothing to your ragtime soul!
Yet, since you are a solemn little chap,
In spite of all your blasphemy and booze,
That dreadful sword of satire which you shake
Hurts no hide but your own,--you cannot use
A weapon which is bigger than yourself.
Yet some there were who rode all clad in mail,--
With crosses blazoned on their mighty shields,
Roland who blew his horn against the Moor,
Richard who charged for Christ at Ascalon,
Louis a pilgrim with his chivalry,
And Blessed Jeanne who saved the crown of France--
Pah! you may keep your whining Superman!
PALM SUNDAY
The grey hairs of Caiaphas
Shall know the truth to-day,
For kingly, riding on an ass,
The Truth has come his way.
(_A thornbush grows upon the hill,
And Golgotha is empty still!_)
Caiaphas waxes eloquent
On tittle and on jot,
But when they cry “Hosanna!”
Caiaphas answers not.
(_A thornbush grows upon the hill,
And Golgotha is empty still!_)
In the temple of Caiaphas
Stand two gold seraphim--
They do not worship Christ nor shout
As the grey stones shout for Him.
(_A thornbush grows upon the hill,
And Golgotha is empty still!_)
The vestments of Caiaphas
With gold and silver shone--
They would get soiled if he cast them down
For the ass to walk upon.
(_A thornbush grows upon the hill,
And Golgotha is empty still!_)
The religion of Caiaphas
Is very spick and span,
It does not love the ill-bred mob,
The homespun Son of Man!
(_A thornbush grows upon the hill,
And Golgotha is empty still!_)
The dark soul of Caiaphas
Is full of sin and pride;
It does not know the splendour
Or the triumph of that ride!
(_A thornbush grows upon the hill,
And Golgotha is empty still!_)
WHEN I RIDE INTO THE TOWN
When I go riding into the town,
When I ride into the town,
I fill my skin at the nearest inn
When I ride into the town.
Oh, what is there then to trouble about?
There are no such things as despair and doubt--
For when ale goes in the truth comes out,
When I ride into the town!
When I go riding out of the town,
When I ride out of the town,
I have my men behind me then
When I ride out of the town;
Halberd, battle-axe, culverin, bow,
Four hundred strong as out we go,
Four hundred yeomen to meet the foe,
When I ride out of the town!
When I ride into the Town of Death--
That strange and unknown town!--
It will not be all _cap-à-pie_,
But with sword and lance laid down.
Then may our Lady beside me stand;
Saint Michael guard at my good right hand--
God rest my soul and the souls of my band,
When we ride into the Town!
REQUIEM
When my last song is sung and I am dead
And laid away beneath the kindly clay,
Set a square stone above my dreamless head,
And sign me with the cross and signing say:
“Here lieth one who loved the steadfast things
Of his own land, its gladness and its grace,
The stubbled fields, the linnets’ gleaming wings,
The long, low gables of his native place,
Its gravelled paths, and the strong wind that rends
The boughs about the house, the hearth’s red glow,
The surly, slow good-fellowship of friends,
The humour of the men he used to know,
And all their swinging choruses and mirth”--
Then turn aside and leave my dust in earth.
AVE ATQUE VALE!
My friends, I may no longer ride with you
To bear a sword in your brave company,
Or follow our poor tattered flag which knew
No shame or slur--or any victory.
But this at least, with courage and with mirth
We starveling poets and enthusiasts
Have shirked no battle for the stricken earth
Against its tyrants’ spears and arbalests.
And though I go to guard another sign,
These things, please God, shall stand and never slip--
(O friends of mine, O splendid friends of mine!)
Honour and Freedom and Goodfellowship,
On which and on your ragged chivalry
I always think with proud humility.
ALADDIN
Though worlds all melt away in mist,
The Heavens’ slender filament,
The orange and the amethyst,
Are left me--and I am content!
I stand serene amid the shocks,
Upheavals, cataclysmic dust,
The binding fires, the falling rocks,
The withering of life and lust.
This little burnished lamp I hold
Has shattered the eternities;
The glamour of all unknown gold,
The ancient puissance of the seas,
The sunlight and the love of God
Are Cast in chains beneath my feet--
For at my first behest this sod
Becomes a cosmos, new, complete,
Instinct with unimagined power,
In colour radiant pole to pole,
The sudden glory of an hour,
The epic moment of my soul!
ADAM
I saw a red sky boding woe,
The gleam of an eternal sword,
And heard the voice that bid me go
From the green garden of the Lord.
I knew the prick of Destiny,
The scorn of the relentless stars;
The very grass looked down on me--
The first of all the Avatars!
Each flower seemed to see my shame;
Each bird as though insulted flew
Before my hateful face--my name
Was blown about the whole world through!
Even my house with its red roof,
Dear as it is, looks strange and odd;
My garden beds are more aloof
From me than is my angry God!
THE ENGLISH SPRING
I love each inch of English earth;
I love each stone upon the way--
Whether in Winter’s sullen dearth,
When the soil is trodden into clay--
In Autumn ripeness, or the mirth
Of a Summer’s day.
Something peculiar to our land
Is hid in even the greyest sky,
When stiff and stark the tall trees stand
And the wind is high.
But this one season of our year
Is so peculiarly an English thing,
When the woolly catkins first appear,
And yellow burgeoning
Upon the little coppice here--
This native Spring
Which comes to us so suddenly,
Blown over the hills from the fruitful South;
Full of the laughter of the laughing sea
She comes with singing mouth.
The cool, sweet Wiltshire meadows lie
With buttercups from end to end;
In secret woods are small blooms, shy
Bluebells the good gods send.
There is no cloud that wanders by
But is my friend.
And now the gorse is gold again;
The violet hides beneath the leaves;
And quickened by thin April rain
The debonair young sapling weaves
His coat of lightest green; again
Birds chirp at the eaves.
Each hidden brook and waterfall,
Each tiny daisy in the sun
Calls to my heart--the hedgerows all
So full of twigs, they call, each one;
And with insistent voices call
The roads where the wild flowers run.
O set with grass and the English hedge
Are the long, white roads which wind and wind--
Roads which reach to the world’s edge,
Where the world is left behind.
AT THE CRIB
Again the royalties are shed,
Disdiademed the kingly head,
He lies again--ah, very small!--
Among the cattle in the stall,
Or in His slender mother’s arms
Is snuggled up from baby harms.
The Tower of Ivory leans down
From Paradise’s topmost crown;
The House of Gold on earth takes root;
From Jesse comes a saving shoot,
For Mary gives (O manifold
Her courtesies!) that we may hold
Our little Lord’s poor fragile hands
And feet, the guerdon of all lands.
No fool need fail to enter in
The guarded Heaven we strive to win,
Or miss upon a casual street
The fiery impress of His feet,
But touch with every stone and sod
The extended fingers of our God,
And see in twigs of the stiff hedgerows,
Or in the woods where quiet grows
Among the naked Winter trees,
A thousand times these mysteries:
The branching arms with Christly fruit,
The thorns which bruise His head and foot.
No more with silver shrilly blown
He treads a conqueror, but, flown
With swift and silent whitening wings,
He comes enwrapped in baby things.
Our God adventures everywhere
Beneath the cool and Christmas air,
And setteth still His candid star
Where Mary and her baby are!
THE MYSTIC
When all my long and weary work is done
(Toiling both soon and late, by candle-light,
Sewing and sewing while my eyes can see)
I lay my glasses by and watch the walls--
The plaster off in patches, stained with smoke--
Melt as a hoary mist and flee away.
Then through the splendour of the evening skies,
Along its star-lit paths, past pearl-white clouds
I hasten till I reach the region where
God’s holy city like a virgin keeps
Its spotless tryst, forever night and day.
I do not linger here, but take my way
To Him who sits among the Seraphim;
And He who knows I am a poor old wife,
With naught of wit or wealth that I can bring,
And that my hands are hardened by my toil--
Sees that ’tis I that need Him most of all.
Yea, God will have the music hushed (for I
Am growing somewhat deaf) and we will talk
Of many things, as friend may talk with friend.
Ah, I have looked, and in the dear Lord’s face
(More lined with care than any earthly man’s)
Seen that He suffers too, and understands
How hard and late I work to keep the wolf
Outside my door, and bring my children up
To serve Him always, and to keep them clean
In body, heart and mind....
At the sun’s call,
Working with all my strength from early dawn,
Through the long day, and then by candle-light
Sewing on buttons while my eyes can see,
I know the glory of God’s gracious face,
And at His touch my weary hands grow strong,
Hearing His voice my heart is glad and gay.
TO ANY SAINT
Before the choirs of angels burst to song,
In night and loneliness your way you trod--
O valiant heart, O weary feet and strong,
There are no easy by-paths unto God.
Darkness there was, thick darkness all around;
Nor spoken word, nor hand to touch you knew,
But One who walked the self-same stony ground
And shared your dereliction there with you.
O valiant heart! O fixed, undaunted will!
While all the heavens hung like brass above,
You faltered not, but steadfast journeyed still
Upon the road of sainthood to your Love.
And was not it reward exceeding great
To kiss at last with passionate lips His side,
His hands, His feet? O pomp! O regal state!
O crown of life He gives unto His bride!
Lovers there are with roses chapleted,
But more than theirs is your Lord’s loveliness;
Your Love is crowned with thorns upon His head,
And pain and sorrow woven is His dress.
SUNSET ON THE DESERT
As some priest turns, his ritual all done,
And stretching hands above the kneeling crowd,
Who rapt and silent, wait with heads all bowed
For the last holy words of benison--
“Now God be with thee, ever Three in One”--
So turns the sun, though all reluctantly.
One thrilling moment comes to shrub and tree;
Expectant stillness falls; then dark and dun
The silhouettes of sphinx and pyramid
Gaze at the last deep amber after-glow;
The little stars peep down between the palms;
And all the ghosts that garish daylight hid
Are quickened--Isis with the breasts of snow
And Antony with Egypt in his arms.
FOLLY
FOLLY
Shall I not wear my motley
And flaunt my bladder of green
Before the earls and the bishops
And the laughing king and queen;
Though hunger is in my belly
And jests my lips between?
Men listen a moment idly
To the foolishness I sing--
But my words are sharp and bitter
In savour and in sting,
And harder than mail in battle
Where the heavy maces swing.
For full of the sap of folly
Grow the branches of the Creed,
The fine adventurous folly
God gave us in our need,
When He yielded up to scornful death
The human brows that bleed.
They nailed the son of Mary
On a gibbet straight and tall;
But the eagles of the Roman
Were struck in Cæsar’s hall,
And the veil of the Holy of Holies
Was rent in the temple wall.
Wiser than sage or prophet,
Or the pedant of the school,
Than lord or abbot or priest or prince
Who over the nations rule,
Are the cap and bells and the motley
And the laughter of the fool!
_February 12th, 1918._
THE SHIPS
The bending sails shall whiten on the sea,
Guided by hands and eyes made glad for home,
With graven gems and cedar and ebony
From Babylon and Rome.
For here a lover cometh as to his bride,
And there a merchant to his utmost price--
Oh, hearts will leap to see the good ships ride
Safely to Paradise!
And this that cuts the waves with brazen prow
Hath heard the blizzard groaning through her spars;
Battered with honour swings she nobly now
Back from her bitter wars.
And that doth bring her silver work and spice,
Peacocks and apes from Tarshish, and from Tyre
Great cloaks of velvet stiff with gold device,
Coloured with sunset fire....
And one, serenely through the golden gate,
Shall sail and anchor by the ultimate shore,
Who, plundered of her gold by pirate Fate,
Still keeps her richer store
Unrifled when her perilous journey ends
And the strong cable holds her safe again:
Laughter and memories and the songs of friends
And the sword edge of pain.
_June 1917._
LAUGHTER
Oh, not a poet lives but knows
The laughing beauty of the rose,
The heyday humour of the noon,
The solemn smiling of the moon,--
When night, as happy as a lover,
Doth kiss and kiss the earth, and cover
His face with all her tender hair.
Sweet bride and bridegroom everywhere,
And mothers, who so softly sing
Upon their babies’ slumbering,
Know joy upon their lips, and laughter
At Joy’s heels that comes tumbling after.
But who shall shake his sides to hear
That sacred laughter, fraught with fear,
That laughter strange and mystical--
The hero laughing in his fall;
Whene’er a man goes out alone,
Is thrown and is not overthrown?
The fates shall never bow the head
That irony hath comforted,
Nor thrust him down with shameful scars
Who towers above the reeling stars.
Thus God, Who shaketh roof and rafter
Of highest heaven with holy laughter;
Who made fantastic, foolish trees
Shadow the floors of tropic seas,
Where finny gargoyles, goggle-eyed,
Grin monstrously beneath the tide;
Who made for some titanic joke
Out of the acorn grow the oak;
From buried seed and riven rocks,
Brings death and life--a paradox!
Who breaks great Kingdoms, and their Kings,
Upon the knees of helpless things....
So flesh the Word was made Who gave
His body to a human grave,
While devils gnashed their teeth at loss
To see Him triumph on the cross....
Thus God, Who shaketh roof and rafter
Of highest heaven with holy laughter!
_October 14th, 1917._
VOCATION
Though God has put me in the world to praise
Each beetle’s burnished wing, each blade of grass,
To track the manifold and marvellous ways
Whereon His bright creative footsteps pass;
To glory in the poplars’ summer green,
To guard the sunset’s glittering hoard of gold,
To gladden when the fallen leaves careen
On fairy keels upon the windy wold.
For this, for this, my eager mornings broke,
For this came sunshine and the lonely rain,
For this the stiff and sleepy woods awoke
And every hawthorn hedge along the lane.
For this God gave me all my joy of verse
That I might shout beneath exultant skies,
And meet, as one delivered from a curse,
The pardon and the pity in your eyes.
BLINDNESS
Open the casement! From my room,
Perched high upon this dizzy spire,
My blinded eyes behold the bloom
Of gardens in their golden fire.
Oh deep, mysterious recompense--
Time static to my ardent gaze!
No longer mortal veils of sense
Conceal the blissful ray of rays!
Fantastic forests toss their heads
For my immortal youth; on grass
Brighter than jewels do the reds
Of riotous summer roses pass.
I traffic in abysmal seas,
And dive for pearls and coloured shells,
Where, over seaweeds tall as trees,
The waters boom like tenor bells;
Where bearded goblin-fish and sharks,
With fins as large as eagles’ wings,
Throw phosphorescent trails of sparks
Which glitter on drowned Spaniards’ rings.
From star to star I pilgrimage,
Undaunted in ethereal space;
And laugh because the sun in rage
Shoots harmless arrows at my face.
For even if the skies should flare
In God’s last catastrophic blaze,
My happy, blinded eyes would stare
Only upon the ray of rays.
_January 20th, 1918._
DRINKING SONG
When Horace wrote his noble verse,
His brilliant, glowing line,
He must have gone to bed the worse
For good Falernian wine.
No poet yet could praise the rose
In verse that so serenely flows
Unless he dipped his Roman nose
In good Falernian wine.
_Shakespeare and Jonson too_
_Drank deep of barley brew--_
_Drank deep of barley brew, my boys,_
_Drank deep of barley brew!_
When Alexander led his men
Against the Persian King,
He broached a hundred hogsheads, then
They drank like anything.
They drank by day, they drank by night,
And when they marshalled for the fight
Each put a score of foes to flight--
They drank like anything!
_No warrior worth his salt_
_But quaffs the mighty malt--_
_But quaffs the mighty malt, my boys,_
_But quaffs the mighty malt!_
When Patrick into Ireland went
The works of God to do,
It was his excellent intent
To teach men how to brew.
The holy saint had in his train
A man of splendid heart and brain--
A brewer was this worthy swain--
To teach men how to brew.
_The snakes he drove away_
_Were teetotallers they say--_
_Teetotallers they say, my boys,_
_Teetotallers they say!_
_September 30th, 1917._
THREE TRIOLETS
I
OF AN IMPROBABLE STORY
I heard a story from an oak
As I was walking in the wood--
I, of the stupid human-folk,
I heard a story from an oak.
Though larches into laughter broke
I hardly think I understood.
I heard a story from an oak
As I was walking in the wood.
II
OF DEPLORABLE SENTIMENTS
I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst
For half-a-dozen bags of gold;
I’d like to drink until I burst.
I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst
For lucre filthy and accurst--
Such treasures _can’t_ be bought and sold!
I wouldn’t sell my noble thirst
For half-a-dozen bags of gold.
III
OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER
You scattered joy about my way
And filled my lips with love and laughter
In white and yellow fields of May
You scattered joy about my way.
Though Winter come with skies of grey
And grisly death come stalking after,
You scattered joy about my way
And filled my lips with love and laughter.
A NEW CANTERBURY TALE
In Italie a mony yeer ago
There lived a little childë Catharine,
With yongë, merrie hertë clere as snow.
From hir first youthful hour she did entwyne
Roses both whyt and reed--Godis columbine
She was. And for hir holy gaiety
Was by hir neighbours clept Euphrosyne.
Ech stepp she took upon hir fadirs staires,
Kneeling she did an Ave Mary say;
With ful devocioun she seid hir prayers
Ere that she wentë forth ech day to play;
Our Blessid Queen was in hir thought alway--
Our Modir Mary whose humility
Hath raiséd hir to hevinës magesté.
When only sevin was this childës age
She vowed hirself to sweet virginity,
Forsweering eny erthly marriáge,
That she the clenë bride of Crist schuld be,
Who on the heavy cross ful cruelly
The Jewës nailéd, hevin to open wide--
Crist for hir husëbond, she Cristës bride.
Swich was the litle innocentes intent,
Hirself unspotted from the world to kepe,
Al hidden in hir fadirs hous she went.
Whether in waking or in purë sleep
She builded hir a closë cellë deep--
Where Lordë Cristë colde walk with hir,
And hold alway His sweetë convers there.
So ful she was of gentil charity,
She diddë tend upon the sick ech day;
To beggars in their grete necessity
She gave hir cloke and petticoat away;
To no poor wightë did she sayë nay--
And when reprovéd merrily she spoke,
“God loveth Charity more than my cloke.”
An oldë widow lay al striken sore
With leprosé, that dreed and foul disease;
And to hir (filléd to the hertë core
With love of God) that she schuld bring hir ease
Did Catharine come, nor did hit hir displese
That she schuld wash the woundës tenderly,
And bind hem up for Goddës charity.
And though the pacient waxéd querulous,
The blessid seintë wearied neer a whit,
For hir upbrading tong so slanderous,
Nor even when upon hir handës lit
The leprosé corrupt and foul--for hit
Is nothing to the shamë Goddë bore
When nailes and speares His smoothë flesch y-tore.
But now behold a woundrous miracle!
For al that Seintë Catharine colde do,
Hir pacient died and was y-carried wel
Unto hir gravë by stout men and true.
When they upon hir corse the cloddës threw,
Then new as eny childës gan to shine
The shrivvelled handes of holy Catharine!
There livéd there a youth clept Nicholas,
Who made in that citee seditioun,
Causing a gretë riot in that place,
So that the magistratës of the toun
Hent him and cast him in a strong prisoun;
And thilkë wightë they anon did try,
And for his sin condemnéd him to die.
And Catharine y-waxéd piteous
To see him brought unto this sorry case,
And went to him unto the prisoun hous
To move his soul to Jhesu Cristës grace.
So yong he was and fresh and faire of face,
Hir hertë movéd was as to a son,
And he by hir sweet, gracious wordes was won.
That for his deth he made a good accord,
And was y-shriven wel of his assoyl,
And with a humble soul received our Lord
From the prestes hands. His hertë that did boil
But little whyles ago--was freed from toil,
And fixéd on our Lordës precious blood,
Which for our sak He spilléd on the rood.
And when he came to executioun,
No feer had he nor eny bitter care,
But walked among the guardës thurgh the toun
In joy so hye as if he trod on air.
Seint Catharine she was y-waiting there
To cheer his soul against the dreedful end,
When unto God his soul at last most wend.
And there thilke holy virgin welcomed him;
“Come, Nicholas,” she said, “my sonnë deere.
The boul of glorious life is at the brim--
Come, Nicholas--your nuptials are neer;
The bridegroom calleth, be you of good cheer.”
And whyl they madë redy, on hir brest
She kept the hed of Nicholas at rest.
And when that al in ordre had been set,
She stretchéd out his nekkë tenderly,
“This day your soulës bridegroom shal be met.
Hark! how He calleth, sweet and winsomely.”
And Nicholas spak to hir ful of glee--
“Jhesu” and “Catharine” the wordes he seid;
Then fel the ax and severed off his hed.
And even as his bloody hed did fall,
She caught hit in her lap and handës faire,
Nor reckéd that the blood was over al
Hir robës, but she kissed hit sitting there,
And smoothéd doun the rough and ragged hair.
God wot that gretë peace was in hir herte
That Nicholas in hevin had found his part.
O holy Catharine, pray for us then,
Be to our soules a modir and a frend;
We are poor wandering and sinful men,
And al unstable through the world we wend.
Pray for us, Catharine, unto the end,
That filléd with thy gretë charity
In Goddës love we schuldë live and die.
IN MEMORIAM F. H. M.
KILLED IN ACTION, APRIL 9TH, 1917
Though now we see, as through the battle smoke,
The image of your young uplifted face
Surprised by death, and broken as it broke
The hearts of those who loved your eager grace,
Your noble air and magnanimity--
A summer perfect in its flowers and leaves,
Brave promises of fruitfulness to be,
Which now no hand may bind in goodly sheaves--
No hand but God’s.... Yet your remembered ways,
Your eyes alight with gentleness and mirth,
The lovely honour of your shortened days,
A new grave gladness on the furrowed earth
Shall sow for us, a new pride wide and deep--
And we shall see the corn--and reap, and reap.
TO THE IRISH DEAD
You who have died as royally as kings,
Have seen with eyes ablaze with beauty, eyes
Nor gold nor ease nor comfort could make wise,
The glory of imperishable things.
Despite your shame and loneliness and loss--
Your broken hopes, the hopes that shall not cease,
Endure in dreams as terrible as peace;
Your naked folly nailed upon the cross
Has given us more than bread unto our dearth
And more than water to our aching drouth;
Though death has been as wormwood in your mouth
Your blood shall fructify the barren earth.
_August 11th, 1917._
JOHN REDMOND
Shall it be told in tragic song and story
Of two who went embittered all their days,
Two lovely Queens divided in their ways
Until their hearts grew hard, their tresses hoary?
Or shall the flying wings of oratory
Of him who bore a great hope on his face
Bring from the grave reunion to the grace
That men call Ireland and to England’s glory?
Courageous soul, not yet the work is ended:
The perfect pact you never lived to see,
The peace between the warring sisters mended
Must of your patient labours come to be,
When in a noise of trumpets loud and splendid
The Gael hears blown the name of liberty.
_March 8th, 1918._
BEAUTY
I
(_RELATIVE_)
How many are the forms that beauty shows;
To what dim shrines of sweet, forgotten art
She calls; on what wide seas her strong wind blows
The proud and perilous passion of the heart!
How many are the forms of her decay;
The blood that stains the dying of the sun,
The love and loveliness that pass away
Like roses’ petals scattered one by one.
But there shall issue through the ivory gate,
Amid a mist of dreams, one dream-come-true,
Beauty immortal, mighty of estate,
The beauty that a poet loved in you;
The goodness God has set as aureole
Upon the naked meekness of your soul.
_July 22nd, 1917._
BEAUTY
II
(_ABSOLUTE_)
Who shall take Beauty in her citadel?
Her gates will splinter not to battering days;
Her slender spires can bear the onslaught well.
Shall any track her through her secret ways
To snare the pinions of the golden bird?
A feather falling through the jewelled air,
Only the echo of a lovely word--
Nowhere her being is, and everywhere.
But one may come at last through many woes
And pain and hunger to his resting place,
The watered garden of the Mystic Rose,
The contemplation of the Bruisèd Face--
The quest of all his wild, adventurous pride;
And, seeing Beauty, shall be satisfied.
_July 29th, 1917._
FAITH’S DIFFICULTY
Not these appal
The soul tip-toeing to belief:
The ribald call,
The last black anguish of the thief;
The fellowship
Of publican and Pharisee,
The harlot’s lip
Passionate with humility;
Or the feet kissed
By her who was the Magdalen--
The sensualist
Is one among a world of men!
Oh, I can look
Upon another’s drama; read
As in a book
Things unrelated to my need;
Give faith’s assent
To that abysmal love outpoured--
But why was rent
Thy seamless coat for _me_, dear Lord?
Why didst Thou bow
Thy bleeding brows for _my_ heart’s good?
How shall I now
Reach to the mystic hardihood
Where I can take
For personal treasure all Thy loss,
When for my sake,
My sake, Thou didst endure the cross?
For my soul’s worth
Was “It is finished!” loudly cried?
For me the birth,
The sorrows of the Crucified?
_February 16th, 1918._
CHRISTMAS ON CRUSADE
Here shall we bivouac beneath the stars;
Gather the remnant of our chivalry
About the crackling fires, and nurse our scars,
And speak no more as fools must, bitterly.
The roads familiar to His feet we trod;
We saw the lonely hills whereon He wept,
Prayed, agonised--dear God of very God!--
And watched the whole world while the whole world slept.
We speak no more in anger; Christian men
Our armies rolled upon you, wave and wave:
But crooked words and swords, O Saracen,
Can only hold what they have given--a grave!
We know Him, know that gibbet whence was torn
The pardon that a felon spoke on sin:
There is more life in His dead crown of thorn
Than in your sweeping horsemen, Saladin!
We speak no more in anger, we will ride
Homeless to our own homes. His bruised head
Had never resting place. Each Christmas-tide
Blossoms the thorn and we are comforted.
Yea, of the sacred cradle of our creed
We are despoiled; the kindly tavern door
Is shut against us in our utmost need--
We know the awful patience of the poor.
We speak no more in anger, for we share
His homelessness. We will forget your scorn.
The bells are ringing in the Christmas air;
God homeless in our homeless homes is born.
THE ASCETIC
A wild wind blows from out the angry sky
And all the clouds are tossed like thistle-down
Above the groaning branches of the trees;
For on this steel-cold night the earth is stirred
To shake away its rottenness; the leaves
Are shed like secret unremembered sins
In the great scourge of the great love of God....
Ere I was learned in the ways of love
I looked for it in green and pleasant lands,
In apple orchards and the poppy fields,
And peered among the silences of woods,
And meditated the shy notes of birds
But found it not.
Oh, many a goodly joy
Of grace and gentle beauty came to me
On many a clear and cleansing night of stars.
But when I sat among my happy friends
(Singing their songs and drinking of their ale,
Warming my limbs before their kindly hearth)
My loneliness would seize me like a pain,
A hunger strong and alien as death.
No comfort stays with such a man as I,
No resting place amid the dew and dusk,
Whose head is filled with perilous enterprise
The endless quest of my wild fruitless love.
But these can tell how they have heard His voice,
Have seen His face in pure untroubled sleep,
Or when the twilight gathered on the hills
Or when the moon shone out beyond the sea!